Who’ll pay for the bailout?

Remember the $700 Billion of your taxpayer dollars that the Bu$h administration was going to hand over to Secretary Paulson, no strings attached? Were you, like so many of us, wondering where that money was going to come from? Our usual lender has the answer:

The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

“The decree appears to be Beijing’s first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland’s major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis,” the SCMP said.

A spokesman for the CBRC had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Alan Wheatley and Langi Chiang; editing by Ken Wills)